


Not Forgotten

by rannadylin



Series: Watcher Violet [9]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Deadfire, Deadfire Spoilers, F/M, Recovered Memories, priest of eothas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 11:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rannadylin/pseuds/rannadylin
Summary: Violet knows she's sailing into the Deadfire without all her memories or all her soul. It's still a surprise to regain a memory that...she's engaged?





	Not Forgotten

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Clan and Court](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12116316) by [rannadylin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rannadylin/pseuds/rannadylin). 



> From the Memories prompts on Tumblr: "A memory that may or may not have happened"
> 
> Oh boy, so that’s a fun prompt for a Watcher… XD Rather than something to do with Awakened memories in the first game, I went with a scene that’ll serve as sort of an intro for a fic I want to write whenever I get around (eventually!) to replaying Violet’s Deadfire story. See, I (like many a poor soul) went into her first playthrough figuring on romancing Edér, and…well. When that didn’t work out, and Vi was getting annoyed with all the other companions jostling to start a romance the very second they signed on with her team (looking at you, Tekehu & Maia pre-bugfixes), I headcanoned that Clan & Court had still happened between games; only, since Edér would not actually be interested in her then either, Anselm’s attempt to woo her back had eventually succeeded. Except, having some of her soul/memories missing at the start of Deadfire…she’s forgotten that. So here is poor confused Watcher Violet as she just begins to remember…(and someday I shall write her Deadfire canon in the form of "Letters to Anselm, from the Deadfire", because once she remembers, she’ll be urgently wanting to let him know she is still alive! and still loves him! and very much not dead! at least not for the moment!)

Everything was hazy, and not just from the sea spray. Violet _knew_ there were things missing; memories, thoughts, even attitudes and basic knowledge that should have been there, _had_ been there since she finished calpulli school at least. Much of that was with Eothas now, and if He needed it, she would learn to do without.

Doing without was somewhat easier, in retrospect, than getting bits of it back, slowly, piece by piece, trickling away from her god as she pursued Him deeper into the Deadfire. Every memory regained had to be realigned with reality as she had come to live it while those memories were missing. Sometimes that was as simple and straightforward as it usually is when you remember something you just hadn’t thought of in a while: a moment of no particular significance, something that happened years ago, that lay dormant in memory until something calls it to mind again. But other memories were so major, called for such a reassessment of who she remembered herself to be, that she wondered how she had sailed this far without them.

For instance: the moment she remembered she was engaged.

The awkwardness of finding Anselm’s visage in her mind’s eye, suddenly familiar again when she had traveled all the way from the Dyrwood without a thought to spare for him, let alone what seemed to have happened between them while Caed Nua still stood, drove her to the Captain’s chambers for an extended time of contemplation and reassessment. Not that remembering Anselm, in itself, was awkward. It was more to do with the way her feelings for _Edér_ had been growing on this voyage – finding out one of your best friends more or less saved your life when your god stole half your soul, or at least preserved your body till your _other_ god could get the remaining bits of your soul back into it, could go a long way to explain those feelings, she supposed. But then she’d only recently discovered how unrequited those feelings were, and only _after_ that conversation had her missing memories of Anselm wandered back into her life as surely as he himself apparently had done, not so long ago.

Had he?

It was still all disjointed. She hadn’t entirely forgotten his _existence_ , to be fair, when Eothas took her soul. She knew she had been betrothed in her youth. She remembered how badly that had gone. She remembered the scene when she called it off. She remembered taking refuge in the temple, fleeing on her pilgrimage, all to escape his control.

But now she was remembering entirely different scenes: her clan all come to visit Caed Nua (had that really happened?), and Anselm among them: older, wiser, repentant, hesitant. Helpful. Clever and skilled and putting his talents to work at her behest. Demanding nothing, without hiding his desire: yielding to her choice in the end. It was hard to be sure it was the same man in both sets of memories, especially when these recent ones were still so tattered.

Still she couldn’t come up with any other explanation for the one scene now playing constantly in her mind’s eye, the clearest of these memories newly regained. They linger at Caed Nua’s gate, hand in hand. His pony stands ready, but he holds tight to her. “You _could_ come with me now,” he says, and somehow she knew, though this was the only repetition she remembered so far, he had suggested this before, several times.

“I can’t,” she says (and regretted it more now, on a ship in the Deadfire, than she ever realized she would). “It won’t be long, though, love.” (It was still a bit of a shock, now on the ship in the Deadfire, to remember how _sincerely_ the endearment left her lips.) “I really do need to be here for the duc’s visit. It would be rude not to.”

He smirks, and she distinctly _remembered_ loving that little smile and the humor behind it, which was most certainly not a memory from her youth, so did it lend this memory credibility or the reverse? “Invite him to the wedding, then. He can visit us in Citlatl.”

She huffs and tugs him closer to kiss that smirk. “Of course I shall invite him, though he will most likely decline to travel that far. I shall invite him, in person, _when he visits Caed Nua_ , this week.” She sighs. “I wish I _could_ join you sooner. But this part of the preparations…well, our sisters are already at work on the embroidery, and my hands won’t make that go much quicker. But as soon as this business is settled, I will join you.” She smiles, kisses him again. “Once and for all.”

“Hm,” he muses, holding her close. “At least we’ll make the return trip together. Which is only going to make _this_ trip feel even longer and more unbearable, without you, but if we must, we must.”

He bids her farewell with one last kiss, and from his pony he looks back to smile and say, “See you in Citlatl, my sweet Violet.”

Sweet Violet, Captain of the Dawnflower, Hound of Eothas, Herald of Berath, could only conclude with regret that he was probably still waiting to see her in Citlatl, and it was looking less and less likely that he ever would.

“Well,” she finally told herself, feeling her cheeks heat and her fur ruffle at the _awkwardness_ of it all, “if we must, we must.” And so she emerged from the Captain’s quarters to seek out one of her dearest friends and say to him, “Edér? I think…I owe you an apology. I thought I was falling in love with _you_ , but it seems…I may have forgotten…I might actually be _engaged_ , back home.”


End file.
